Your responses in this thread were much easier to write off when I just assumed you were a college kid or something. Now they're just sad.

You have daughters and granddaughters and continue to lob sarcastic little remarks at people who want to treat women with respect. Awesome.

We used to debate "nature vs. nurture," but every day the case becomes so much stronger for nature that I can't believe anyone would doubt this. Every day there are discoveries of our genetics and what they determine for us, how nature has set us up to be this or that. How can anyone seriously deny this?


More accurately, you chose to do so or you don't participate in the sport and media that men have created for other men. But last time I checked, women were free to develop their own media outlets and sport leagues and so on. And last I checked, it was fairly well accepted that women have the abilities to do such things just as well as men do. Therefore, it's kind of silly for women to complain about the way men have chosen to set up their sports and media. If it doesn't suit you, if anything in society doesn't suit you, then simply get to work and create something new. That's what men did after all, right?

In other words, women can't both argue that they are as capable as men and argue that they need men to take it easy on them. It's either one or the other. I prefer to believe the former and so don't particularly like the latter because of what it does to undermine the notion of how intelligent and strong women are.

I think everyone here wants to treat women with respect. But perhaps there are disagreements on how to do so.

Some think it is respectful to women to be the "white knight" and do things for women that they wouldn't do for other men, while some believe that simply not being any rougher on women than they would be on men is the true mark of respecting women.

Are you serious? Grumpy made a good point, and didn't use any bad language or demean any women, or anything, and you remove his post?

Get a grip doc.

I'd say that a good 90% of the moderating I do in this forum is in response to complaints by men. I'm not even sure that the women in this forum feel empowered to complain. Hopefully now they will/do.

The third option is to join me as ad hoc administrators of the Way of Purity and Righteousness.

The pay isn't very good but is lots of bennies.

Everything else you said was relativistic tripe but it makes sense to me at this point in time nonetheless.

Hey, guess I'm sad, cuzz I've gotten many a chuckle from his replies. But for real, I expect everyone to treat women with respect, so I don't get how you would be different.

Doc, when all you have is a hammer in your hand you tend to see the world as one giant nail.

Plenty of women have posted in here about what they consider respectful. I'll just let their posts speak for themselves. Of course, plenty of guys have taken the time to explain to them why they're wrong and they should just adopt the same standards as the least common denominators on this forum.

Funny, that's what I thought when all I was reading from you was sarcasm and lame attempts at humor throughout this thread.

well... I did warn you it would be long and boring

Like I said before, you can bring some evidence or experts that support your opinion, and I can bring some that supports mine. That debate isn't closed by any means. And I choose nurture over nature. Simple as that.

(use your imagination to fill blanks)

No doc, you can't. You have to impose your moral values. You are not moderating, you are systematically censoring based on your interpretation, your standards, and your paradigms. A MODERATOR simply keeps play in bounds, and a good moderator will wait until someone raises a flag before taking the fairly extreme step of message deletion etc. As for your respect for women: You say you will let their posts speak for themselves. NO, you don't. Here comes Dr. Pete, like Don Quixote, jousting at the windmill because deep down, he believes the women CAN'T speak for themselves. So he appoints himelf not only moderator but defender of the "weaker sex" because somewhere deep down, he thinks they need his defense. Now THAT ios condescending to women.

Hang your head in shame.


I knew I shouldn't have logged back on tonight, but at least I got my PM about buying a Trek touring bike...

Jokes about sex belong in this thread why again?

I'm also quite comfortable with the responses I've gotten from the women on this forum about my take on things--it's been uniformly positive. Nice try, though.

I won't be hanging my head in shame any time soon, thanks.

You know DrPete, I don't have the college degree like you have, I'm just a 45 year old man with my own business. One of my favorite things to do is simply observe people. What I have observed from you is that you have an agenda that you feel very strongly about. You have taken every opportunity to use the positive feed back to your advantage, and have twisted the words of those that don't fully agree to be as negative as possible. You take the posts of those that choose to find humor in a pointless argument, and squash them. To be honest, as smart as I'm sure you are, many people have posted in here with open and intelligent points of view that are just as valid as yours, yet less agenda driven. Unless you consider free will an agenda. I agree that you may want to think about whether or not you can moderate this thread and participate.

I'm not a participant and I didn't review the deleted posts however I have read through this thread a few times and have been, generally, impressed with the quality of the conversation.

The thread addresses a valid topic that needs reasonable discussion (i.e. Has RC become a forum that discourages female participation) and I, for one, want to see this continue.

If deleting a handful of off topic or juvenile posts keep this thread alive then I think Pete is doing the right thing and probably showing more forbearance than I would have.

There's nothing wrong with giggling about sex jokes, in fact that's why we have Foo. If you want to be downright crude there's P&R. Let's try to keep this thread on topic.

PM to DrPete sent. Otherwise I consider this site a hostile environment. AMF OTD HTB NSDC.

Please refrain from the word "tripe".
Coasting the limey will think it's supper time.

Why are the opposing points valid and mine constitute an "agenda?" Is not representing the status quo that frightening? An "agenda?" I would argue that those who have disagreed with me have twisted my words just as effectively. Calling them an agenda is a nice example in fact.

I've actually tried to keep the mod hat off as much as possible, and there have been posts that I think were better off deleted. Hard to do sometimes, I'll admit. And as in any moderating situation, sometimes it's too much, sometimes it's not enough. Just doing the best that I can.

The validity of a point does not make it irrefutable.

Agreed Walter, but IMO, perhaps you wouldn't have thought that they were crude or that they even violated forum guidelines.

Seems to me that the sexist remarks should absolutely not be deleted in this thread as they tend to drive the point of this thread home. Take a breather Doc, and I agree with the others -- you should refrain from being a mod and a participant in any particular discussion.

As far as attitudes towards women go -- if you want to attract more women in the forums, cut out the obviously disrespectful and trashy crap that goes on here -- you don't need to be told what it is -- you already know (and if you don't, you shouldn't be a mod).

fwiw: I would like to join The Weak Link in his quest for clean language in the forums -- it's a step in the right direction. Is it really necessary to commonly use foul language when other more succinct words are readily available? Time to get out the dictionary folks -- the level of meaningful discussion will improve a lot from putting an end to the foul language (whether it's spelled out or implied by asterisks). Note that I'm far from being a puritan and I quite enjoy time with "the guys", but I do tend to enjoy discussion that doesn't resort to trailer trash talk. Come one, come all... join the crusade!

Where was the joke? He made a good point. He just made it succinctly, instead of rambling on for 500 words. You didn't delete his addendum version that took up half a page but said the exact same thing.

If anything, I was the one that made the joke. Did it hurt anyone? No. It wasn't a joke about sex. It was a joke about test taking.

But thanks for laying down the iron fist yet again. I used to like you, and then you became a mod.

there was nothing juvenile about it. it just went over some heads apparently.

this is why I left the thread in the first place. I came back because, well, I was still interested in the topic, but I don't really want to participate if there is some arbitrary removal of posts.

I agree with DrPete. I can't speak for the majority of women, but I appreciate what he's done. I don't plan on sitting here silent any more. It's interesting to see that a couple of men* here are playing the victim, even as they rail against women for doing the same thing.

I also think you should leave the contentious posts up, with the rebuttals. At least it's out in the open and we can try to have a dialogue. I'm fairly impressed that it's made it this far without a major trainwreck, despite some efforts.